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Polly got her heart and eyes tested today..

We went to a canine club and they had clinics set up today with cardiologists and optometrists for all breeds. Polly got her eyes and heart checked out and rated excellent on her eyes as well as her heart. He said there wasn't even a hint of a murmur so good start to her first year (she will be 1 the end of March)

Great news - and nice to get this done. This would be a pretty normal result for 99% of 1 year olds on hearts as MVD is progressive -- would be very unusual for a dog to show a murmur before age 2ish even with early onset MVD. If there are murmurs at 1, they tend to be some other congenital heart condition. It is great to know her baseline at 1 for future tests -- that's the other good reason for getting an auscultation when they are young, so you know where you are starting from.

There's a little chart somewhere in the Library section that shows onset of murmurs and ages.

Here it is -- I'm wrong, guess about 1-10ish% show a murmur by 18 months according to this study anyway, if you go on what specialists hear (though it doesn't clarify the type of murmur & there is a type of 'puppy murmur' that tends to go away on its own by age 1. I wouldn't think there's that high a rate of MVD related murmurs before 12-18 months pretty certain this is something else). Rod Russell probably knows thee statistics, if he sees this. I have never found what study this image refers to!:

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Oz was diagnosed with early onset MVD at 4 months of age (unfortunately not a puppy murmur). He is 2+ years old now and his murmur is still a grade 1. He also has an intermittent A-V block. He just saw the cardiologist in January and got the o.k. to go to cardiology exams every 2 years instead of yearly. His heart is the same size and his murmur sounds the same now as it did at 4 months of age. He gets 1000 mg Omega 3 and 30 mg CoQ10 every day. I still might bring him in yearly just for my peace of mind though.